Come here. They’re robbing. They rob me. And if you don’t think I’m going to do it, I’m going to kill them off my quest. In the early 1930s, New Jersey was a state divided among numerous organized crime clans. Some local, others from outside. The Newark faction controlled by Gasperi Demo and the Elizabeth faction controlled by Stfano Badami.
Badami however was a controversial figure and over time the New York faction of the family turned against him. In 1955 while sitting at Veto’s clan bar in New York the brother of his former underboss Frank Monaco entered the restaurant and stabbed Badami age 66 to death. After his funeral a new boss was to be appointed a man named Filippo Amare.
His reign however was also shortlived as a mutiny formed against him. The Newark and Elizabeth factions were once again at odds. And in 1957, less than 2 years after taking power, Amari fled to Sicily, leaving another power vacuum in the family. This void was later filled by Nick Delore, the family’s under boss. Before passing, he decided to name his successor, his nephew, Simon Delavakante.
In 1980, the family boss decided to step back, officially retiring in 1982. His position was then passed to Giovani Rigi who would lead the organization into the new decade. Despite this, the family entered the 1990s under his leadership and their legal troubles combined with internal insecurities would soon lead to a significant wave of murders.
Roam [singing] at night barefoot run pastel stones under the sun. Hold that spark. It is October 16th, 1989. Delavakante boss John Riy has become the main target of a series of federal indictments concerning extortion in the construction unions of northern New Jersey. He, his sons under boss Jirro Lammo Polalmo and family soldier Salvator Vasola were all accused of controlling local 394.
On July 20th, 1990, Rigi and Vasola were convicted of extortion. Polarmo was acquitted while the family boss received a 15-year prison sentence. Unable to directly control the family himself, a new mutiny began to form between the factions of Newark and Elizabeth, a conflict that would soon spill blood. After his incarceration, Riy established a new ruling committee to manage the family.
Basa, who was facing his own charges, became the acting boss of the family. At that point, he was high enough in the organizational hierarchy to essentially oversee day-to-day criminal operations, making his appointment logical. Shortly thereafter, however, Festola received a heavy 10-year extortion sentence and disappeared from the radar.
In truth, it was better that he was out of the picture. For unbeknownst to him, the Gambino family boss in New York, John Gotti, and his right-hand man, Sammy Gravano, had already plotted Vasola’s murder with Jersey Capo, John Damato. The 1990s were an interesting period for the Northern New Jersey crew. The family still lived in the shadow of New York and remained under the iron grip of the Cambinos.
Meanwhile, the organization’s increasing aggression had begun to raise the body count as they tried to prove to the northern mobsters that they were in fact a force to be reckoned with. After Visa’s imprisonment, a period of violent chaos descended on the streets of northern New Jersey. Tomato was one of many family men conspiring to assassinate those above him on behalf of the Gambinos.
When Vasola was gone, Riy appointed Damato as the new acting boss. Damato, who had become a capo and Elizabeth the previous decade, wielded considerable influence over the family’s labor rackets, working alongside Polarmo while generating profits through numerous gambling operations with Majori. However, once Damato became acting boss, it became increasingly clear where his loyalties lay.
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He was an obvious puppet of the Gotti family, willing to sabotage his own men to curry favor with New York. While the New Jersey mob was already concerned about its place in the mafia hierarchy, this went too far, sparking a quiet mutiny that began to form against him. The first signs of Damato sabotage appeared in 1991 when Lewis Loraso, one of the family’s original administrative men, vanished.
Damato feared that Loraso could become a potential rival as the demoted underboss was reportedly planning to turn Charles Majori against him. Consequently, Loraso had to disappear. On November 11th, 1991, Loraso went out running errands with his wife. Afterward, the couple visited their daughter for dinner. Just after the meal, Loraso said he had to go somewhere, but never specified where, and he climbed into his wife’s car, speeding off. He was never seen again.
Safano Vibbella, the family’s longtime consiliary, secretly ran the organization behind the scenes, unbeknownst to his men or the new acting boss. He had been part of the plot against Loraso and aimed to control the family quietly without drawing public attention. Vitabella had himself conspired against numerous family members he considered potential threats.
And once Loraso disappeared, Damato was next on his list. Last cold. It is late 1991. The Del Cavocante family was in the midst of violent internal conflict. Men were dying left and right as the organization began to turn against their acting boss, John Damato, whom they increasingly saw as a puppet of the Gambino family in New York.
Meanwhile, Stfano Vabella continued to run the family’s operations behind the scenes. One day, Antonio Ratundo found himself with Damato’s girlfriend, a woman with whom he was also actively involved. She had just come out of a violent argument with Damato, one of many in their turbulent relationship. In a fit of anger, she revealed compromising information to Ratando.
Their boss, John Damato, was homosexual. She disclosed that Tom Damato regularly frequented swinger clubs in Manhattan, attending large sexual parties and cheating on her with men. Ratundo almost immediately began to share this secret, which quickly reached the ears of family captain Antonio Capo. Vitabella, eager to remove Damato, was pleased with what he had heard.
He knew this could serve as the perfect justification for Damato’s potential murder, as under other circumstances, John Gotti would never have tolerated such behavior. The consiliary traveled to the federal correctional complex in Butler to visit Ricky and told him everything. Mobsters feared that having a homosexual boss would make the already marginalized organization look even weaker in the eyes of their New York associates, a stigma within the mafia that could permanently tarnish any remaining respect they had.
This combined with their growing aversion to Damato sealed his fate. Damato was now on the hot seat and the men chosen to plan the hit were Vinnie Polarmo and Antonio Capo. Vinnie Polarmo was born on June 4th, 1944 into an Italian-American family and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In his youth, Polarmo served as an alter boy at his local church.
But in 1960 at the age of 16, he lost his mother. His mother suffered from severe asthma, which made it difficult for her to leave the house. So Polarmo found work at the Fulton Fish Market in New York. This job would later earn him the nickname Vinnie Ocean, which other gangsters would use to refer to him. In 1965, at the age of 21, Polarmo married a member of the family of the late Nick Delore, wetting the niece of Simon Delavakante.
Delavakante took a particular liking to Polarmo and as a result began bringing him into the Kennallorth plumbing store, where he met many of the family’s gangsters. Polmo soon started running a lucrative extortion racket alongside the Gambino family’s capo. He was a ruthless man with a sharp eye for spotting the weaknesses and fears of others and he spoke very little in the presence of other gangsters by keeping his distance from social gang clubs and never saying anything incriminating.
Polarmo was arrested only once in his career for stealing shrimp from the market where he worked. In 1977, Polarmo was formally initiated into the family. He later divorced his first wife and remarried, all while continuing to show affection for his first family. By the late 1980s, Polarmo had become a wealthy man. Of course, his wealth came from illegal sources, and Polarmo needed a way to legitimize his money, which led him to Wiggles, a popular strip club on Queens Boulevard that the gangster used as a source of legitimate income.
With a large family, an even bigger house, and a lentious business under his name, Polarmo was a content man, and his career would truly take off in 1989 when he liquidated Fred Weiss. Polarmo carried out his job alongside his fellow gangster Anthony Capo. And from that point forward, both men would become highranking members of the family.
In 1959, Anthony Capo was born into an Italian family in Staten Island, New York. After obtaining his high school diploma, Kappo begins studying to become a certified asbestous removal worker. However, he is not very interested in his classes and even goes so far as to have the school operator take his final exam for him.
As a result, he can no longer work in the field. He knows nothing about asbestous removal. By the late 1980s, Capo is officially recognized by law enforcement as a member of John Rriggi’s Delavakante organization. Over time, he obtains his own crew in New York. At the same time, he runs a lone sharking operation that lasts 8 years with Joseph Watts, a highranking German Italian associate of the Gambino family.
Between 1986 and 1994, this scheme brings in more than $12 million. Known for being a raging cocaine addict and violent man, Cabo is the kind of gangster who is sent when the bosses want someone handled violently. He enjoys hurting others by any means possible. Knife, gun, fists, and builds a reputation by proudly sharing his stories with his associates.
In one recorded conversation, Kappa was heard boasting about having attacked a man who owed him money. He explains how the gangster in question entered his bar shouting to get his money back. I really smashed his face in. I The idiot didn’t die, but I beat him badly. I cut him up all over.
I chopped him so bad he looked like dog meat. And then I threw him in my car. It is now January 1992. The highranking leaders of the Delavakante family are secretly planning to eliminate and replace their boss, John Damato. A combination of reasons, including his loyalty to New York rather than New Jersey, and his sexual deviance, has brought them to the point of no return.
Since the early days of the established American Kosanostra, the law regarding the removal of a boss had always been to approach the commission and obtain approval from each boss on the panel. However, they felt it would be better to keep the embarrassment hidden, particularly from John Gotti, and simply assassinate the boss in secret.
Meanwhile, Damato had recently returned to New York from Florida and had gone to see his girlfriend in Mil Basin, Brooklyn. While at her place, he received a call from Capo, who suggested taking the boss out to lunch in the city. Damato agreed and after leaving, walked a block further. There, Capo and another gangster, Victor Delsiara, arrived by car to pick up Damato.
He got into the back seat and told the men, “Let’s eat.” However, as Deliaro began to step on the accelerator, Capo, sitting in the passenger seat, turned to face Damato with a firearm in his hand. Bam! Two bullets to the face. His body was taken to a safe house where it was dropped off by Capo and Ratando for other men to dispose of.
On the corpse, they found $5,000 and gave it to Dier as compensation for his car, now stained with blood. In the investigation that followed, the police were able to trace the car and discovered Damato’s blood all over the back seat. However, they never recovered the body and Damato was reported as missing.
With his disappearance, the role of boss fell to the interim underboss, Gainino Amari. Gainino Amari was born on March 14th, 1945 in Rabira, Sicily. He became a mafioso very early in life. But at one point, Amari murdered a police officer in Corleone. At that time, Corleone was controlled by Michelane Navara, a ruthless mafia boss who had risen to the top after taking control of the town.
After committing this crime, Amari fled to the United States where his real story began. Over time, with a reputation and influence to his name, Amari became a captain within the Del Cavakante family and established himself as an intimidating and highly profitable member of the organization. When John Damato took control, Amari grew very close to Stfano Vittole, who as mentioned earlier was running things behind the scenes.
Although Damato was the one who promoted Amari to interim under boss after the murder of Loraso, it was his association with Vabella that allowed him to keep the position after Damato’s subsequent murder. Under Damato, Amari made more money than ever before. He essentially controlled all of the construction rackets within the organization and became a consultant for Local 394, the mafia controlled union in the region.
However, when Anthony Ratundo revealed Damato’s secret lifestyle to the other gangsters, it was Amari and Vabella who called for his death and set the plan in motion. Of course, this was a plot organized across the entire family involving many gangsters such as the Wall Street criminal Philip Abram. When everything was over and the smoke from the gunfire cleared, it was decided that Amari would become the new boss of the family.
Amari and Vtobella now work together to lead the organization into the new decade. At some point in the mid 1990s, a conflict emerged between Amari and two of the New York families, the Gambinos and the Columbos. At that time, the Columbbo organization was recovering from its brutal third internal war with its boss serving a life sentence.
The Gambinos were recovering from the collapse of John Gotti’s reign caused by underbust informant Sammy Gravano. The Del Cavocantes had recruited Lewis Calavo and Gregory Rago. The two were New York gangsters and could not be formally inducted there and instead became members in North Jersey. That alone was not a problem.
The problem was that the two men had begun running a profitable social club on Mod Street in New York along with several rackets in Manhattan. Their tribute of course went back to Amari and this upset the men in North Jersey. Vabella and Amari represented their family while the Columbos sent their acting consiliary, Veno Aloy.
The Gambinos were represented by their acting boss, Nick Karazzo, and the men began discussing the best way to resolve their differences peacefully. Everyone wanted a share of the profits. But as the New Yorkers argued, since Rago and Consolvo were operating in territory controlled by other families, their tribute should go to those respective families.
The issue was resolved when the men agreed on a new rule. The Delavakantes could only induct men from New Jersey in southern Philadelphia. However, just as things seemed to be improving, Amari made a shocking discovery. He was dying of stomach cancer. In 1995, the acting boss of the Del Calvakante family, Joino Amare, was diagnosed with stomach cancer and did not have much time left to live.
His adviser, Stfano Vidabella, approached him with the idea of setting up a ruling committee system made up of three high-ranking mafios who could help enforce his will on the street. The idea was run past Rii who accepted it and a partnership of three gangsters was created.
Giroma Polalmo, Charles Majori and Vinnie Polarmo. At the same time, Polarmo himself was facing legal trouble with his business, the Wiggle Strip Club. The city of New York had begun cracking down on indecent businesses located within a certain distance of family zones such as schools and churches.
A study conducted by the municipal government had concluded that the adult establishments brought violent crime and dangerous individuals into those areas. It was therefore decided that any such business located less than 500 m from a school or a church had to close and relocate. Wiggles was among those businesses.
However, the law was heavily contested and challenged by the owners of these establishments who argued that adult services were simply an extension of the First Amendment’s freedom of expression. In 1995, a proposal was developed to satisfy both sides, known as the 7040 rule. This rule stated that any adult business located in that zone could legally remain open if only 40% or less of the business was devoted to adult services.
As a result, Polarmo kept his business 60% empty at all times, and his illegal cash flow remained active. Meanwhile, Amari’s health continued to deteriorate, and in 1997, it had reached a point of no return. Lying in a hospital bed, Amari, aged 52, succumbed to his illness and died of stomach cancer on June 14th, leaving a power vacuum within the family.
Suddenly, everyone wanted a piece of the pie, and no one really knew who the boss was. Vabella stepped in and institutionalized the three-man committee system as the official structure of the Delvakante family. A unique idea that had not been proposed in any other families before. The organization now had a three head boss.
The idea behind the system was to maintain stability in northern New Jersey until they could find the ideal man to run the organization. Vabella would play the role of mediator between the three captains in a kind of balance of power system. It was supposed to be a civil alternative, but of course, as one might expect, it was not. During this period, the crime scene on the east coast had changed radically.
The patriarch family of Boston and Rhode Island had fallen victim to numerous aggressive RICO prosecutions following their civil war in the early 1990s, and they were smaller and more broke than ever. At the same time, the New York crews were witnessing their own decline, which had begun in the early 1990s as men were being arrested left and right.
They were no longer able to exert their power over regional organizations as they once had. But the Northern Delavakantes were not suffering as much, which gave them a new confidence that they had never had before. The New Jersey crew had always been considered the shadow of New York, nothing more than their southern cousins.
Decades of insecurity resulting from this had led to a wave of violence. But with New York trying to keep a low profile, the Del Cavocantes found an opportunity to assert themselves and rise. They had interest in many rackets and were well known in their community. While other criminals across the country were struggling with their mortgages and debt payments, and while most regional families, such as those in Denver and St.
Louis, had essentially been wiped out, the Jersey mob was raking in millions. They were doing well, at least until January 14th, 1998. At dawn on January 14th, 1998, three men entered the ground floor of the North Tower in New York. The men in their 40s were Richie Gillette, Melvin Frank, and Mike Reed from Brooklyn.
As they passed the crowd of employees arriving for their first shift, the three criminals, secretly armed with pistols, entered the elevator, and went up to the 11th floor. There, they patiently waited outside the Bank of America currency exchange office. Meanwhile, outside, a Brinks armored truck arrived at the tower entrance and stopped.
Two security guards got out of the truck and carried $3.2 million in bags of cash, half of it in foreign currency, which they then loaded and brought into a freight elevator. The elevator stopped on the 11th floor where the exchange office was located, and the three criminals immediately sprang into action. They held the guards at gunpoint, tied them up, and loaded the money into their duffel bag.
They sent the elevator to the floor under construction while they themselves took the passenger elevator. They went down to the ground floor, exited the elevator, and unknowingly remove their masks in full view of a security camera. In fact, they looked directly into the camera as they left the tower with only half of what they believed to be US dollar bills.
[screaming] Within hours, photos of the men were released to the press and the police issued a wanted notice for the gangsters. They were from Windsor Terrace, a mafia controlled neighborhood where they were apparently very unpopular with other residents. With a large reward of $25,000 offered for information to make the deal more tempting, it did not take long for officers to catch up with the men.
Within 2 days of the robbery, Folk and Reed were arrested and taken into custody, but Gillette was nowhere to be found. A few days after the robbery, a police officer was making his rounds on a large passenger train passing through Albuquerque, New Mexico. The train’s final destination was California. But because of the large amount of drugs being transported by train at the time, a new security system had been put in place.
The officer approached the cabin of a tired and unkempt looking man and noticed he had a bag with him, but nothing seemed suspicious. The officer continued his patrol through the train as it stopped in Albuquerque before realizing that he had just questioned the last missing suspect in the bank robber. When he ran back to Gillette seat, the man was already gone, now on the run in New Mexico.
Officers began searching the streets for their suspect. However, police soon received a call from a local bar where a bartender told them that Gillette was sitting right in front of him. The fugitive, unaware that police were heading straight to his location, stood up and went to the restroom. The officers entered, but the man was not there.
No one had seen him go into the restroom, so everyone assumed that he had left the bar. The officers exited the establishment and left while Gillette finished his business in the restroom. Gillette returned to the motel where he was staying while two officers positioned themselves around the building. One stayed in the parking lot while the other began questioning the receptionist.
As Gillette exited the building, he walked past the officer without wearing his usual sports clothes. Although the officer at the desk did not immediately recognize him, the officer outside immediately tackled Gillette to the ground and handcuffed him. FBI agents began a deeper investigation into the robbery and concluded that the three men could not have acted alone and that another person had been involved in the plot.
The person was Ralph Gino, an associate of the Delavakante family. It all Ralph Gino was an interesting gangster. He was a short man who stood out among the men around him. He paid great attention to his appearance and the way he dressed, and he was not really a fighter or street thug. His specialty was rather theft.
Ralph loved planning jobs and carrying them out, such as a series of illegal gas stations he operated in New York. And after the bank robbery, police linked Gino to the plot. He had met a World Trade Center employee named Salvator Talziano, who provided him with an employee badge from one of his friends.
Less than 10 days after the robbery, police showed up at his door and arrested him. They informed the gangster of the charges he was facing and managed to convince him to wear a wire and become an informant against the organization. They fitted him with a listening device and began to listen. What the FBI heard was disturbing.
A civil war was brewing in northern New Jersey between two highranking men, Charles Majori and Vinnie Polarmo. The two capos were part of the family’s ruling panel and were rivals who wanted control. It was discovered that Majori, furious at the idea of not being the boss of the family, was preparing a plot to assassinate his rival.
And to do so, he turned to his soldier, James Gallow. However, Major was a man with few friends and many enemies. Since he had become boss in 1992, Major had exercised control over his fellow gangsters by firing many of them from the union he ran. So, Gallow went to see Polalmo and revealed the plot. Polarmo decided to take his time and strike first while Gallow dragged out Major’s plot.
Meanwhile, Gino continued to gather information on the street. The feds provided him with a batch of secretly bugged phones, which he was supposed to present as illegal, untraceable mobile devices. He went to see some of the men near Sako’s meat market, a pork butcher shop in Elizabeth, where the gangsters operated, and gave them the devices.
And one of the men who received the phone was his driver, Joey Misella. Miscella was born in 1948 into an immigrant family in Brooklyn. Growing up in the same neighborhood as men like Polarmo, Damato, and Majuri, he got involved in criminal activities from a young age. Joey lost his father, Alex Misella, when he was young.
after his father was electrocuted while working on a railroad. The young gangster was left in the care of his mother who was reportedly mentally abusive. As Palmo demonstrated strong initiative and rose through the ranks in the mafia, he took Mea under his wing as a sort of protege. Since the two men were good friends, he gave Meela a small crew of men like Kappo and Gallo and he ran a large-scale gambling franchise.
the money from his racket as well as his role as Polarmo’s bodyguard, maintained his high position in the organization. However, over the years, Melo proved to be completely incompetent. After his marriage, Mela settled in Staten Island, but developed a gambling addiction. This addiction ruined his business and left him heavily in debt.
He went from wealth to a precarious life, desperately trying to make money. Unable to repay his debts to a lone shark, he lived in fear, spending most of his time holed up at home. By the late 1990s, Mella had accumulated a debt of $450,000. He drove Gino while the latter talked about money problems and potential ways to make money with him.
The FBI listened in as the two spent practically the entire day discussing businesses. But Polmo, who was fed up with Misella’s behavior, was about to offer him a new opportunity, which would come in the form of a certain Charles Majori. She was unlike any girl I’ seen. Fearing for his life, Polarmo decided to act preemptively against Majuri.
He sent a team of hitmen composed of Meello, Capo, and Gallo. The group stationed themselves outside Major’s house in Lynon without a precise plan, hoping to catch him off guard as he left. After a long fruitless wait, they noticed a state police car parked nearby belonging to Majari’s neighbors. Faced with this complication and growing nervousness, Misella decided to abandon the mission and leave.
Afraid of what he had done, Misella flew to Florida as things calmed down in New Jersey. there. He called Polarmo and informed him that he would not go through with the plan. His chance to advance his position, serve Polarmo well, and become a made man was now completely gone. While Polarmo reconsidered his stance toward his rival, the boss ultimately decided that the rather disadvantaged Majori was not a real threat as he had the captains behind him.
Although the family was led by a three-man panel, Polarmo was essentially the sole key player on the ground and the hit on Majority was abandoned, ending the potential civil war. He also reconsidered his position regarding Mella, who had become such a disgrace to New Jersey gangsters that something drastic needed to be done about him. On October 10th, 1998, Myella received a call from a mafia bookmaker named Steve.
Steve, who owed Meella money, told him over the phone that he had about $10,000 ready to give him and gave him a meeting location. Myella got in his car and went to the specified location, but found no one there. Greco was standing among many other men, and Myella finally understood what was happening. Bam.
[clears throat] The gangster was rushed to the hospital shortly after, but it was already too late. Miscella’s story was over and Ginos had hit a dead end. With Mela’s death, a restructuring was inevitable. Polarmo, seeking to turn the Del Cavocante family into a true mafia organization, knew that changes were necessary.
Ralph Garino was then placed under Joseph Tineirclavani, an old-fashioned mafioso. Sclafani, known for his experience and discretion, was tasked with managing Gino and stabilizing the situation within the family. Despite the apparent progress of the Delavakante family, problems soon began to emerge. Within a few months, unexpected events started to disrupt the situation.
The family, despite its apparent prosperity and regained stability under Polarmo, faced growing threats that would soon trigger a series of devastating setbacks. Authorities intensified their efforts. Internal rivalries emerged and management mistakes occurred. The organization’s apparent solidity began to crack and the first signs of decline appeared, threatening to disseminate the Davakante family for good.
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Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
